We started a new series of articles aimed at knowing the cognitive processes and their connection with the mechanisms of vision.
It is a complement to the articles on visual perception previously published in this Blog. Now we seek to give a new approach to the questions, what we see and how we see, introducing neuroscience concepts that better explain us that vision is not an isolated sensory process but is integrated into the complex mental framework and that we can understand better under a cognitive.
Introduction to the eye and brain
The scientific study of mental activity began with the psychology laboratory of Wilheim Wundt at 1879 in Germany. The main idea was that the content of consciousness, that of which we are aware, can be studied in a similar way to other basic sciences such as physics or chemistry, characterizing the basic sensations (feeling cold or warm, or seeing the colors) and the feelings, etc., as the molecules are characterized, in units that are then analyzed in the way they are combined, the laws that govern them. In the same way, the rules that describe how simple sensations combine to form perceptions, such as seeing an object in its totality, would be studied. Edward Tichener, disciple of Wundt, ampIn the USA, not only the study of sensations and feelings, but all mental activity.
From these studies it was concluded that mental activity can be broken down into more basic operations. The second major contribution was to describe objective methods to assess mental activity (time in decision-making, etc.).
One of the problems that is argued against these authors is that the results they reached, in the great majority, depended on the method of introspection, mental images (see with the eye of the mind).
To get out of this problem, the American psychologist William James, follower of the functionalist line, did not focus on the nature of mental activity but rather on the function, in what mental activities occur in the environment. I observe that certain behaviors were more effective in solving everyday problems, it is about discovering what is better suited to our environment and why those activities are better than others, what makes them work better. The line of research was based on a functional study of behavior, an idea very close to Darwinian evolutionary theories.
Behaviorism
Some authors rejected everything that could not be observed. It was not valid to investigate with elements that could not be objectified as in the basic sciences.
The idea was to work on the binomial, stimulus-response, all mental activity was discarded since we could only know the incoming stimulus and the response that produced (output). The father of this new approach is BF Skinner. This approach failed, but many things, experimental approaches and methods were used and many elements that have been very useful in topics such as learning.
Cognitivism
Many of the questions formulated in psychology did not respond to the behavioral approach, which determined that the role played by the mind, especially with the appearance of computers in the seventies and eighties, was re-valued. The idea of the computer motivated us to return to focus on what was happening inside the machine, the process of computing and processing the information that is introduced and that conditions the information that comes out. The computer model and computers were the inspiration for the cognitive revolution.
Mental activity would be similar to the computer's computer program. The brain is the hardware and the mind the software or, rather, the example we use is that of a chip, that is to say a circuit recorded in the hardware, which performs a certain operation, it is no longer necessary to separate the hard from the soft, the operation is done directly with the hard. In the same way, it is intended to explain the difficult question of the dualism that separates mind and brain. The chip processes information, in the same way that neural networks in the brain process information that comes through the senses.
Cognitive Psychology
In cognitive psychology the key is in the processing of information and for this we must understand the description of a process in levels of analysis. It is necessary to differentiate between the level of functional analysis, for which a scissors serves, with respect to the physical level of analysis, in which the physical parts are described, in the previous example, the composition and disposition of the molecules that constitute the scissors. The levels of analysis can not be replaced because they describe qualitatively different things, therefore, to understand the mind it is not enough to study the brain, as a physical structure, in the same way that to understand what scissors are for, it is not enough to study the molecular structure of its leaves.
This does not mean that the study of the brain is not necessary, on the contrary, it must be studied together with the mental processes, both constitute the two sides of the coin, there is not one without the other, You could not make scissors with wet cardboard, it is important to know the material to understand the functions, the scissors cut because the blades are made of sharp metal.
The internal information constitutes the representation, understood as a physical state that transmits information, symbolizing an object, event or a category or its characteristics. The representation has a format (drawing, verbal, etc) and a content, and both constitute the meaning that the representation communicates. The format can be a written word, where its strokes or drawing must be in a certain way, so the word word in English is written as we have done it and not otherwise, wok wol, etc, are not appropriate forms of representation "word in English. The meaning may be variable, the same content may be in more than one format.
Mental processing
In the same way that for there to be sound, a brain is needed that hears, French words transmit information to those who speak French, that is, because the French have learned to properly process that information. A process is a transformation of information that adheres to well-defined principles to produce a specific result (output) when given a given input (input). An input is associated with an output.
A mental representation is a representation that conveys meaning within a processing system and, a processing system is a set of processes that operate together to carry out a type of task using or producing representations as needed, such as in a factory cars, that he gets metal and other materials (representations), to process them and that the car finally comes out. A complex activity requires several processes, each of which enhances a part of the final total set.
The concept of algorithm is defined as the step-by-step procedure that guarantees that a given input will produce a certain output (a good recipe is a good algorithm). The algorithms can be online or in parallel.
There is a balance between structure and process. The brain structure determines the possibilities of the process, in the same way that the physical characteristics of a computer (RAM, chips, etc.) define the possibilities of processing it.
Creation of mental images
The mental image, the basis of memory, is the fact of visualizing with the eye of the mind an image that we have previously seen and now, voluntarily or involuntarily, we evoked again. The mental representation has a period of survival and we can modify it by adding or deleting parts of it. The mental image tends to represent the real world, the image we capture of reality through our sensory organs, in this case sight and, as the signal that generates the retina It is of topographic type and that signal is what reaches the brain, so it is understood that the mental image has this characteristic of being similar, such as a picture or a photo, of what we saw, is what is stored in memory.
Now we know that this stored image is not the same for different people, although the scene witnessed is the same for everyone. The characteristics of the mental image depend on the value we give to each part of the scene, of the observed objects, the emotional factor that accompanies them, etc., multiple factors that explain the differences. Now we also know that this image will be modified over time, our experiences, especially those that relate or include that image, in reality, will modify the mental image we had, that is why it is difficult to state the memory with a legal purpose.
The cognitive brain
It is important to know that each area of the brain performs a specific task, but that no cognitive function is due to the isolated action of a certain area of the brain, it will always be the result of the interaction of different areas.
Knowing the physical structure of the brain helps us to understand specific aspects of its functioning, in the same way that a city that is built on bricks, we know that there can not be skyscrapers because the weight of the upper floors would cause the building, steel is required for skyscrapers, without it we can not build skyscrapers and that explains why a city like London, for a long time, was a city with low buildings, since the basic building material was bricks.
When we analyze the structure of the brain, if we find neurons and their axons well coated with myelin, we know that there will be good communication between them, that functional networks will be given in a very effective way. The levels of neurotransmitters will also give us an idea of how neurons communicate and how the systems they make up work.
The brain is organized in lobes and each with a certain function. It is important to remember that the right portion of the brain processes the inputs that arrive from the left portion of the body and vice versa and, for this reason, the retina, as it is an extension of the brain, processes the information in the same way, inverted , with nuances, as we will see, but this character of investing the side in which the information is processed is maintained.
Parts of the brain and eyesight
The study of subcortical areas has revealed many of the new concepts that we handle today in the cognitive section. Attention, one of the most important, we know that it is related to the thalamus and the pulvinar nucleus.
- The hypothalamus controls many of the functions of the organism.
- The hypocampo It is a key piece in the entry of new information in memory.
- The amygdala is the mediator of emotions and is intimately related to the hypocampor, associating the emotional factor with the memory.
- The basal ganglia they are fundamental for daily life, allowing us to plan movements and acquire habits (automatic actions, allow us not to think about everything we do).
- The nucleus accumbens, key structure in learning, in the functions of "reward" (pleasant sensation that is experienced associated with a certain visual experience, like a smile in the interlocutor when we talk to someone, when we see it again that pleasant sensation is generated, the reward, which is generated in the nucleus accumbens and which informs other areas of the brain).
Cognitive Psychology
At first cognitive psychology focused on the level of information processing, similar to what was being done with computers. Now the focus has changed, is pregnant with new concepts in neuroscience, we start from the basis that the mind is the result of what the brain does.
Cognition is information processing, but a processing done by the brain, that is, a structure that defines or characterizes the way in which information is processed, so neuroscience studies the brain, the existence of specialized areas in different processes, to elaborate theories of processing systems. Cognitive neuroscience is interested in what the brain does, in understanding the brain itself, what do its different parts do and how do they interact?
